Lessons in leadership are sometimes best learned when you listen to the people you lead. In advance of our recent Real Jobs Summit in Greenville, South Carolina, American Solutions conducted a poll of registered voters in South Carolina and found a very telling piece of information. When asked who was better equipped to grow the economy, 72 percent chose private businesses and companies and only 21 percent picked government.
What the people of South Carolina clearly understand is that reducing not expanding the size of government and lowering taxes are essential for private business and companies to accelerate economic expansion and help create jobs. Why, after more than a year in office, has the Obama Administration not learned this lesson?
Monthly data just released from the U.S. Department of Labor shows hiring temporary Census workers boosted what are already dismal job creation numbers. Approximately one-third of the 290,000 new jobs created in April were either permanent government jobs or temporary Census jobs. This means that taxpayers are footing the bill for nearly 1 in every 3 jobs created in April.
Beyond the boost in government workers, the economy saw a small increase in private sector job growth in April with just over 200,000 positions added to payrolls. Yet, the unemployment rate remains drastically high at 9.9 percent because more Americans are restarting job searches.
Job creation success should be measured by how quickly jobs are created and if they are sustainable. To date, Washington has failed every unemployed American. Bloated government and stimulus spending is a boon for politicians, government employee unions, and foreign debt holders, but in 14 months out of control federal spending has done nothing to lay the basis for enduring prosperity for the American people. More than half of the 15.3 million unemployed Americans have lost their jobs in the last two years. Moreover, the numbers who’ve given up looking has also increased from this time last year.
The U.S. economy must create 292,000 jobs each month to return to the pre-recession unemployment rate of five percent. This is no small task, nor is it possible by pursuing the current Obama administration economic policies of more borrowing, more taxes, more regulation, and more spending. Turmoil in Greece and the Obama Administration floating the idea of even higher taxes in the form of value added taxation to pay for record levels of spending darkens an already grim forecast.
In an effort to change this dismal course, U.S. Congressman Jim Jordan, who represents a swath of rural Ohio stretching from the I-75 corridor on the west to Mansfield in the east, has introduced in Congress an economic prosperity legislative package based on American Solutions “Jobs First” plan. We are urging people to contact their Representatives in the U.S. House and ask them to sign on to H.R. 5029, the Economic Freedom Act of 2010.
Let’s look at what the bill will do:
· Reduces payroll taxes by fifty percent in 2010 for both the employer and employee, allowing for greater take home pay for individuals and more money for companies to hire new employees and make new capital investments.
· Allows small firms to expense 100 percent of the cost of new purchases. Spurring equipment purchases will have a positive effect in other industries, especially manufacturing.
· Reduces the corporate income tax rate to 12.5 percent and completely eliminates the capital gains tax. These two bold tax reforms will be an enormous boost to productivity and stop jobs from going overseas by making the United States -- not India or China -- the best place in the world to start and run a business.
· Permanently eliminates the Death Tax and its perverse double taxation of family business generated wealth, which will be a tremendous incentive to continue the growth of small firms from one generation to the next.
Elected officials and those seeking office should pay close attention to the people they lead. In the case of his South Carolina constituents, President Obama should heed the message that lower taxes and allowing small firms to grow is the best way to create jobs and the grow the economy.